<Is the "Wall" going up?

Jerry Pournelle has repeatedly stated that a good strong wall with everybody on their own side was the only possible solution to the Mideast crisis.

This news may be the start of this solution. Note the nervousness of the West Bank settlers: they realize that if an impenetrable barrier is built on the 1967 borders, that it is only a very small step to scraping them out of there to finish the whole process off. There is a precedent for this: Israel scraped the settlers--by hook or by crook--out of the Sinai Peninsula before giving it back to Egypt.

It is worth noting that Sharon was instrumental in clearing reluctant settlers out of the Sinai back then.

A solid wall, eight meters high. The settlers hauled out and compensated. Screw negotiations: tell Arafat or whoever the head thug is when the wall is done: here's your nation. Your side of the wall. We picked the border location because frankly we weren't interested in your opinion, which probably would have been to put the wall on the Mediterranean beach anyway. Now have fun.

Checkpoints, IDs, the works. The Berlin Wall, rebuilt. The Palestinian State = the West Bank, by default. By decree.

Such walls do work. The Hamas has a hard time getting terrorists out of Gaza.

Problems? Sure. A lot of Palestinians work in Israel, an arrangement that currently suits both. This may have to be curtailed. Israelis doing their own work, and Palestinians unemployed in their very own state.

After this happens, the obvious next step would be for the quadrillionaire Arabs that are thick in the Middle East to start investing in West Bank Palestine. Build factories and banks there. Hire Palestinians to work there. Open up Jordan to guest workers. Use the vast Arab wealth to help Palestine create a real country.

Yeah, right.